‘Parasite,’ Michael Bloomberg, and Jean Renoir

by

The unexpected victories of the South Korean film Parasite at this year’s Oscars have propelled me into two distinct lines of reflection.

First, there’s the now evidently global appreciation of stories of inequality and class war. Plutocratic bad guys are nothing new in narrative art, but stories that dramatize the gulf that has opened between the one percent and everyone else are both peculiar to our moment and not peculiar to any one advanced economy, but rather, most or all of them. As a social phenomenon, Parasite’s Oscar is the Hollywood equivalent of the improbable rise of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to best-seller status in the U.S.

Michael Bloomberg should not be heartened by Parasite’s triumphs.

Second, had non-English-language films been admitted into Oscar competition as far back as, say, 1929—the year that talkies supplanted silent pictures—how many should have won? (That’s “should,” not “would,” since it’s inconceivable that Hollywood would have paid much attention to the rest of the world until our more recent globalized days.) Consider, for instance, 1937, a year devoid of Hollywood masterpieces save only Greta Garbo’s performance in Camille. The Best Picture Oscar that year went to The Life of Emile Zola, but the Warner Brothers’ simulation of Paris pales alongside the real Parisian knockout of that year, Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, a French film in which French World War I POWs speak French, their German captors speak German, and for a few moments, in a conversation between an aristocratic German officer and an aristocratic French officer that neither wants their underlings to understand, those two characters speak in English. By any measure, Grande Illusion was not merely the grandest but the greatest film of 1937. Just as, once we start going down this path, several films by Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi shine above those of his American counterparts in the early 1950s. 

We’re only beginning to grasp what Parasite’s Oscar hath wrought.

There's too much at stake this November for us to quit. As we navigate another presidential election year, thoughtful independent journalism is more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on what's really happening across the country this election season, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in America.

Please support us today.

Quality reporting doesn't come for free, and we don't have corporate backers or megadonors to rely on to fund our work. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to help make what we do possible. This month, we're trying to raise $50,000 to help fuel our election year coverage, and we need your help to make it happen. Any amount you give will help us deliver the high-quality coverage you expect from us this election season.

You can help power this newsroom by making a donation today.